The Cell Door Slammed Behind Rubishov.

When Reality Becomes Unbearable, The Mind Must Withdraw From It And Create A World Of Artificial Perfection. Plato's World Of Pure Ideas And Forms, Which Alone Is To Be Considered As Real, Whereas The World Of Nature Which We Perceive Is Merely Its Cheap Woolworth Copy, Is A Flight Into Delusion.

Some Tribes [of Monkeys] Have Taken To Washing Potatoes In The River Before Eating Them, Others Have Not. Sometimes Migrating Groups Of Potato-washers Meet Non-washers, And The Two Groups Watch Each Other's Strange Behavior With Apparent Bewilderment. But Unlike The Inhabitants Of Lilliput, Who Fought Holy Crusades Over The Question At Which End To Break The Egg, The Potato-washing Monkeys Do Not Go To War With The Non-washers, Because The Poor Creatures Have No Language Which Would Enable Them To Declare Washing A Diving Commandment And Eating Unwashed Potatoes A Deadly Heresy.

The Greatest Temptation For The Like Of Us Is: To Renounce Violence, To Repent, To Make Peace With Oneself. Most Revolutionaries Fell Before This Temptation, From Spartacus To Danton And Dostoevsky; They Are The Classical Form Of Betrayal Of The Cause. The Temptations Of God Were Always More Dangerous For Mankind Than Those Of Satan. As Long As Chaos Dominates The World, God Is An Anachronism; And Every Compromise With One’s Own Conscience Is Perfidy. When The Accursed Inner Voice Speaks To You, Hold Your Hands Over Your Ears….

We Cannot Unthink Unless We Are Insane.

The Creative Act Does Not Create Something Out Of Nothing; It Uncovers, Selects, Reshuffles, Combines, Synthesizes Already Existing Facts, Ideas, Faculties, And Skills.